New drugs at forefront of cancer battle

October 16, 2013|By Jeff Bahr, jbahr@aberdeennews.com

Although available research has not supported claims that spirituality or prayer can cure cancer or any other disease, spiritual well-being is linked to better quality of life in people with cancer, according to the American Cancer Society's website.

Dr. Bongi Rudder, an oncologist and hematologist at Sanford Aberdeen Medical Center, is not Delbert Haselhorst's doctor, but she is knowledgable about multiple myeloma, which involves cells in the bone marrow called plasma cells.

Like any other cancer or neoplasm, those cells “begin to increase and multiply outside of the usual checks and balances that the body has,” Rudder said.

Multiple myeloma is one of the cancers that, while fairly common, medical researchers “still haven't had a great breakthrough in terms of cure. But we do have great treatment for it,” Rudder said.

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Over the past seven to 10 years, some newer drugs have improved the overall survival rate for patients, she said.

While those drugs have not provided a cure for most, they have allowed many people to survive without disease for long stretches “that can seem to someone who especially gets the disease late in life a reasonable cure.”

Because multiple myeloma is not one kind of a disease, it's important to establish which type of risk group a patient falls into, Rudder said. The treatment can vary from intravenous drugs and chemotherapy for high-risk groups to single-agent drugs for others.

She also noted that everyone's multiple myeloma is not the same.

With medicine in general and multiple myeloma in particular, there are so many types of patients that people react differently in how they respond to treatment or how long they can be off of treatment.

So it’s important, she said, to continue following up with a physician to see if things are progressing, if they remain the same “and if a patient is doing well.”